Silver and Secrets
by reenka
Summary: Nothing is simple anymore when you want what you can't have & could never ask for, from the two closest to you. Harry is trapped on the other side of the silver looking glass and the need is stronger than his will to let it be. Secrets, change and H/R/Hr


disclaimer: not mine.  
  
warning: slash. het. some dirty linen.  
  
dedication: kassie, because you wanted me to-- and because you just want them to love each other.  
  
  
  
  
~~Silver and Secrets  
  
  
  
He had a thing for blonds, secretly.   
  
He didn't think it would ever matter. His heart was elsewhere since third year, and he figured he was normal-- like Ron. He was allowed inexplicable hormonal rushes, and if fair hair did it for him, or dark, it didn't really make a difference. Ron was his constant barometer of all things normal and male and wizarding. While Hermione might disapprove, Ron would utterly reject-- unless it had to do with one's hormones. Then he'd compromise. After all, it was perfectly fine to (not-so-secretly) long for Hermione while entertaining lascivious thoughts about Fleur.  
  
Sometimes Harry was still unsure-- confused-- sometimes being tied to the things everyone expected him to do and feel and believe became unthinkable, stifling. So there was Ron, to depend on, to bring him back to himself. Ron wasn't confusing. Ron was-- Ron. He'd slept next to him for years. Every meal, many a Christmas, every important and central thing in his life, Ron was a part of. They had no secrets from each other.   
  
Mostly.  
  
Harry missed the days when there were none. It wasn't like one morning, he woke up impure, tainted by a sudden pressing knowledge that had to be held secret even from his own everyday awareness. He'd seen them, this morning. He'd seen them, and his heart felt hollow, tight and brittle and lodged painfully against his ribcage.   
  
They too, had a secret.   
  
Perhaps theirs came first. Perhaps Harry wasn't meant to feel this way, not really. Perhaps he was still just the way he remembered himself from yesterday and the day before. He couldn't un-know what he now knew, but still he tried. This was far from welcome. And Ron wouldn't be there to consult this time. Ron was on the other side of a sudden, irrevocable divide. Harry knew he shouldn't feel this way. It was wrong. It was immature. Childish, even. But he couldn't stop, not now.  
~~  
  
Being friends should be simple, and it was. All it took was a smile, and a look, and maybe a choice, although it wasn't. Being together was never a choice, not for them. They just were.   
  
And here they are.   
  
And Harry sees two futures out of many, and he sees himself there, not even a step away from his best friend. He sees himself as clearly as if it was happening, right then. He can't even process that it's not happening, because it is. It's happening, and he can't stop it. There is a reason it's happening-- and a reason it couldn't. He sees a future unravel, and it shifts from possible into real.  
  
As Ron buries his bright hair in his chest, his shoulders are shaking, and they know he has to go, and there isn't a choice, it seems impossible. As much as they fought it, and each other, and as many times as it had seemed like everything could fall apart any moment, they didn't think it could, not really, not for them. This is always, and this is now, and this is then, his tentative smile still spreading across his face as Ron offered to share his sandwich, his tummy still feeling warm and his eyes smarting slightly because suddenly the whole world seemed new, more revolutionized than with magic, more whole than with all the hope he was told was now his.  
~~  
  
So this wasn't something Harry could stop. Not when Ron had Hermione, and Harry, Harry had nothing. He had the see-through shell of his self from yesterday, he had the secret set loose, swimming in acid within his stomach, that he tried to keep down, as if he could swallow it into oblivion. He had his refound fear that he didn't know the first thing about himself, which hadn't been this acute since the first incredulous months after he found out he was a wizard.  
  
He saw them kissing, long and hard and deep. Ron's hair was flaming, as brilliant as the snow sparkling in the sun, as it was broad daylight. Apparently, it wasn't a secret to anyone but him. He should've been angry. He should've felt betrayed, shocked, indignant.   
  
He felt left out.   
  
His eyes couldn't leave the contact points of their mouths, meshing, surging against each other, deftly devouring. He could see Hermione's tongue, pink and glistening with saliva, sinuous in its movements as the rest of Hermione never had been. He was mesmerized by the swift, darting jabs and the slow unwindings and the rhythmic thrusts.  
  
His own tongue lay coiled, tense and devoid of moisture within his own mouth. There was a pounding in his temples, and he had to lean against the nearest wall, trying not to slide down bonelessly to the floor, clenching his fists, trying to breathe.   
  
He wasn't doing that well.   
  
He might've fainted right then and there if his instinct of self-preservation hadn't kicked in and he hadn't hurried away the best he could. He'd thrown himself onto his bed, closed the curtains, panting, laying back, eyes screwed shut against the light filtering through the fabric, relentless as this new, unwelcome knowledge.  
  
Everything was different now. Of course it had been, really, for weeks, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that now he knew. He knew he'd wished for things that were horrifying and impossible and heart-breakingly true. He'd wanted to be Ron. He'd wanted to be Hermione. Anything but himself, standing there, alone and unseen and hard to the bursting with a sudden, rending finality of need.   
  
He still was.   
  
He groaned low in his throat, almost like a growl, frustrated and weak and on the brink of sobbing, of all the insane things. He wasn't confused at all, not now. He thought one more moment, one more breath of this overwrought, treacherous, blinded body, and he'd tear himself to pieces, looking for the one remaining bit untouched by all this.  
  
He saw red and warm brown-sugar curls, mixing.   
  
He saw red.   
  
He couldn't bear one more moment, so he didn't, so he sprang up and unthinking, ran, breathless and determined and quite, quite desperate. He knew he needed something completely different, something to consume him, to consume this. As different as he'd become.   
  
Something to burn him away.   
  
Something to obliterate the ragged pieces of his heart snagged in random corners. No, not random. He knew where they were. They were now together-- conveniently combined. But he wouldn't think about that, not again, not ever. He was their friend. He loved them. He wouldn't betray them like this. He wanted their happiness more than anything.  
  
For a moment, he had felt light headed, having gotten up too quickly. His blood seemed to have left his head all at once, pooling somewhere lower down. He was still shaking slightly, unable to control it, unable to control any of it, really. What he wanted-- what he wanted right then-- it was nearly overpowering. He wanted to run back the way he came, and rush at them, and touch them, hug them.   
  
And it would be alright.   
  
He wouldn't feel like this anymore.   
  
He could see it so clearly-- how they'd open their arms, and how their body heat would combine, and how they'd be smiling and laughing into each other's necks, burying their cold noses in each other's scarves. There would be snow left on the wool, but not for long. Their heat wouldn't take long to turn it to running water. There'd be snow on their hair too, and their cheeks, and their knees where the ground cover had drifted. His tongue would alight briefly on Hermione's cheek, catching a snowflake as it melted. He could almost smell them, the distinct flavors of Hermione and Ron and that strange, pungent tang they'd created between them. The scent which had seemingly followed him here, which wouldn't leave him be.  
  
He gasped, his hand shifting inevitably against his body, restless. He almost hated himself at that moment. If he didn't go now, in one more second his fingers would wrap around their target, and he'd never be able to look into their faces again without blushing, and flinching, and wanting to look away.   
  
So he was running, now.   
  
He was running too fast, heedlessly making his way down corridors and leaping steps on ever-shifting stairs. His flush and ragged breath was from simple physical exertion, and nothing else. He burst through the Great Hall entrance, stalking over to the Slytherin table.   
  
There was only him, and his estranged girlfriend and the faceless boy-- Zabini, was it? It was a Sunday morning a few days after term started, and everyone was still used to sleeping in. Unceremoniously, he grabbed the blond by his sleeve and dragged him along, startling the other boy so severely that for long moments no sounds other than wordless gurgling noises passed his lips. Before the inevitable tirade could begin, he cut him off.  
  
"I know you know what this is about, Malfoy. I've seen you this year-- your eyes on me. I know what you're thinking, because you're not the only one thinking it. So why don't we cut through the bullshit. I need something, and so do you, and a certain mutually beneficial exchange would be easy enough. I know you hate me-- and that's fine, the less we like each other the easier this will be. No illusions, no promises, no lies. What do you say?"  
  
Malfoy's eyes were huge and pale in his already blanched face. He blinked at him, apparently trying to ascertain exactly what sort of joke Harry thought this was. It didn't sound too much like a joke, but then you never knew with Gryffindor humor. Malfoy stared at him, for once caught off-guard in complete surprise. Harry wasn't above feeling satisfaction at this. Maybe he wasn't himself, and maybe he hated himself, and maybe this was sort of like his worst nightmare he was bringing to fruition, but at least there were aspects he could find amusing. The expression on Malfoy's face right then was definitely one of them.  
  
"I... I...." Malfoy swallowed, and then his mocking indignation reasserted its usual dominance over his features. "I'm not that easy, Potter," he said finally, smirking, though his words sounded odd, spoken in that hollow, flat tone of voice.  
  
Somewhere in his chest, something felt rather cold.   
  
He brought his face closer, descending slowly, daring Malfoy to move, to break away, to say something even. But the other boy said nothing, his mouth flat, a thin colorless line slashing across the bottom half of his well-bred face.   
  
And then Harry's hands were at the blond's shoulders, pinning them back or holding on or both. He breathed, jagged, torn little breaths he surprised himself with. This was wrong, all wrong, and he didn't know what he was doing, or why, or how he'd ended up here, pushing his constant tormentor against a wall and considering doing any number of obscene things to him. He just wanted-- he didn't know what he wanted. He'd thought-- he'd thought he wanted that prickly brightness, that wrongness slipping under his skin whenever he'd looked at the blond lately. He'd hoped it would change things.   
  
Change him.   
  
Something of his own, something not quite pain, not quite desire, not quite hate, something disconnected from name and destiny.  
  
He imagined them watching-- standing just off to the side, the two of them, with their own ocean, their own heated waters, disconnected and apart from his, with not a stream or river to bind them. Their presence was so strong, so palpable-- a part of him, even now-- especially now. He flashed back again to their intertwined forms, their twisting, tangling mouths, their braided fingers. It didn't matter, not right then, who it was, next to him.   
  
In his mind the moments merged and melted together, and it would've been enough. More than enough.   
  
And then Malfoy was pushing him away, panting, glaring at him balefully, still breathing too fast to form words coherently, in shock or fear or something else. Harry was too disoriented himself to resist as the trademark silver-blond head retreated down the corridor, disappearing from sight. He could only stand there, feeling dumbfounded and bereft and separated from some essential part of himself, for the second time that day.  
  
He did slide down the wall, his knees kissing the floor this time, his head dropping against his chest. He felt defeated and empty, not to mention really, really stupid. He heard their laughter drifting towards him, as they finally made their way to catch what remained of the meal, probably hoping to slip in unnoticed. He raised his head, too drained to try smiling, but feeling the irresistible urge to see them.  
  
"Harry!" Hermione cried, her smile fading as she saw that he was on his knees, his mouth red and bleeding slightly from where he'd bitten it, his expression bleak. In a second she'd be at his side, and he'd need to explain, and he'd have to get up, and he'd have to go back to being Harry.  
  
He looked at them both, now completely focused on him, probably unaware their fingers were still linked. It struck him as ironic-- funny even. He wanted to laugh, but couldn't. Instead he smiled, and got up, and somehow they seemed to all have the same idea at once, because the next thing he knew, they were hugging each other, and he didn't need to explain after all.   
  
Not yet.   
  
He closed his eyes, wondering if this was friendship, this accepting of the distance for the sake of it being breached. And maybe this sense that they had never known there was a distance to breach, or a secret to tell.   
  
Maybe that was the secret.  
~~ 


End file.
